Re: The Walking Dead - TV Series on AMC
I didn't think you guys were ever going to shut up.
Good thing there's no limit on multiquotes.
The need for shelter is a basic need and trumps a right to property. This is, afterall, a survival show.
Whose need for shelter trumps whose? The next group to come along looking for shelter gets to force their way in too? What happens when there's no more room? Since no one has a greater right to it than anyone else (being that right is now subordinate to need) and everyone considers their own need as being of the utmost importance, the only way to decide is the way it started: by force.
You tell me how long 'survival' will last on those terms.
I personally feel Shane's reaction was a challenge to authority, to leadership, and for alpha male status. I don't feel as though it had anything to do with survival.
I think you're right. He's scared ____less, it's controlling his mind, and he thinks the only way to protect himself is by imposing the control he lacks on everything and everyone around him.
With a show like this there are really no right or wrong just the consequences of your actions. Society has broken down so most of the social rules are gone. We have seen some of the consequences for the actions of Shane and Rick. The show is great because it brings up these types of discussions.
Morality is not a social convention.
Disagree. Right and wrong decisions are exponentially more important. The right decision keeps you save and the wrong decision gets you killed. Keeping those walkers in the barn was wrong. Eventually, there'd be too many to contain, they'd break out and the group would have a herd to deal with. Lives would likely be lost when they broke out. Better to deal with the issue while it's still relatively safe. Yes, it's a wake-up call for Hershall, but he can't deny what he saw.
And Shane's decision to force Hershel's hand has now most likely driven them off the farm.
He meant you can't get caught up in philosophical questions of what is morally right or wrong when the world is in survival mode.
I think detaching morality from survival is a mistake. If life is the good, then survival is moral. That begs the question of whether a dog-eat-dog approach to survival is actually conducive to survival. I don't think it is, and that's why it's immoral.
We also have to understand that Rick is still trying to make decsions based on the old society's ways. As you watch the show, these outdated notions are slowly leaving him. Shane did not believe in these social norms before society fell.
And if Shane's way of thinking were what the world lived by, there would be far fewer people alive in the world, even before the zombies became an issue.
Rick does not hold to the ideas he does because society says it's right. He does it because he understands survival better than Shane does. Shane has a short-range grasp of survival (like a dog, as it were). Humans aren't short-range animals. If they're going to survive, they need to be able to see beyond the range of the immediate moment.
Who "defines" what is right and wrong in this new world? Like it or not, the rules have changed and you can't live solely by the old rules anymore. You have to adapt to survive. The struggle comes in trying to maintain a balance between your "old" self and the new person you need to become in order to survive in this new world.
I don't see a difference between the old world and the new one, other than that there are fewer people and that their old safeties are not secure in the face of this new threat. But nature has always been replete with threats.
No one defines right and wrong. They are facts, and they aren't established by consensus. They're identified, by reason.
I agree. Which is why, like him or hate him, Shane's actions regarding the walkers are not only appropriate, but entirely necessary. Regardless of his intentions, selfless or selfish, what he did was better for the group and Hershall's family.
It wasn't better for the group because now they have no shelter. I suppose they don't have to waste time looking for Sophia anymore, but it's not like they were devoting significant resources that were needed elsewhere any time soon.
In the long run, it's safer for Hershel's family if they don't have the barn full of walkers, but what's to say they couldn't have been taught that their hope for a cure was not worth the risk had Rick's way been the one that prevailed?
thenammagazine said:
Too many, as we call them, armchair generals. As I was discussing with Pix over AIM, how many people possess the fundamental skills for survival (like starting fire from scratch), let alone be qualified and capable of establishing security and making the right decisions for a group of survivors in a hostile situation. If you remove the Lori aspect from Shane's psychosis, he is exactly what this group, or any for that matter, needs to survive in this type of environment.
Shane's psychosis is why Lori is a problem for him. I do not believe she is the cause. Any value that he sought to acquire in this situation would provoke him to acts that cross the line.
However, yes, there are presumptions that would make a lot of people incapable of dealing with a primitive survival scenario. For instance, if you had a group of modern college professors settling North America in the early 1600's, they'd probably end up like Roanoke. But that's not because the proper way of dealing with other people is brute force. It's because the natives in Virginia already lived by brute force (much like the walkers) and the colonists had to be willing to meet that force with greater force if they ever wanted to exist there as human beings.
The only thing I've seen that Shane is capable of that Rick is not is that Shane has no problem initiating force against other humans to satisfy his survival needs. Rick will retaliate against force if he is approached with it (which he proved in the episode with the nursing home guys, and in dealing with Merle) but he does not start from an assumption of the necessity of using force to coexist with other people.
I agree there are things that need to be done in order for survival to be possible, but once you let the specter of brute force against each other through the door, it will rule your fate until you force it back out.
Like you stated humanity has to get it act together but we have not been able to do that ever.
Yes we have. How do you think this country got to the level it's at?
I would love to see how other nations would handle this situation like the Middle East where survival is hard everyday.
And survival is hard there because their code of values places rational, long-range thought far below emotional conviction and dogmatic passion. Their morals are not conducive to survival as human beings, hence their success if far lower than that of the countries where reason is considered a cardinal virtue.
It would be like a kennel owner whose kennel somehow had an outbreak of rabies. Would you still say it would be wrong for someone to go against the owners wishes and go in and destroy the rabid dogs?
Yes. Do we let religious fanatics vote? How about racial supremacists? Radical leftists? Should we get rid of that influence in our political process to eliminate the potential threat they pose to our society?
Before humanity could even begin to flourish again the threat would have to be neutralized. To do that, the brutality Shane and Darryl have shown would be needed. Simple as that.
Shane extends the same brutality to walkers and humans alike. Daryl only extends it to the walkers. If the whole group was like Shane, they'd all be dead already, and it would not have been death by zombie.
After speaking to men that were in Vietnam, sometimes you had to leave your humanity at the door to survive. This is what is happening to Darryl and Shane but Darryl seems to be more on fence as the show goes on while Shane is becoming harder. The parts with darryl and Sophia's mother show that he is softening some not a lot but some.
And those men who left their humanity at the door in Vietnam will often tell you that it was not waiting where they left it once they got out.
Daryl is not compromising his humanity, and that's why he's not becoming like Shane. The walkers aren't human. Force is the only rational way to deal with them.
The "humanity" aspect is entirely subjective. The instinct for survival is just as human as the need for compassion.
I don't think that compassion is what distinguishes humans from animals. Reason is. Reason is our basic tool of survival, and it doesn't function with a gun to its head. Force doesn't get us very far. At best it can fend off a threat, or loot what others have. It is notorious for it's inability to make a good decision.
And the instinct to survive is not 'human'. It's a basic animal instinct, unlike compassion. Being able to rise above animal instinct is what makes us human.
Yes. Except for us it's not an instinct.
Survival, while also an animal instinct, is just as human as compassion. The only difference is one is more pure (natural) than the other. The need for survival is built into our human DNA. The other, which essentially is guilt, is programmed afterward and not crucial to being "human."
We are not programmed to survive. If we were, then people would automatically know how. We have deep motivation to stay alive, but wanting to stay alive isn't enough. Shane's 'will' is all front.
As bad as Shane has been, I don't think he has reached that point where he would take the farm by force even if it meant killing Herschel and the others. For the sake of argument let's say that is exactly what he intended. It would fall flat because no one else from his group would ever go along with it. He can't take the whole farm by himself.
By taking the initiative of action in the face of Rick's supposed inaction, and using the guns to do it, whether he has calculated accurately or not, force is how he attempted to become the authority on Hershel's property.
The lack thereof triggers what response in you? At it's very heart, what makes you stop and drop change in a bum's cup?
Guilt can't make me put so much as a penny in that cup (which is not to say that I have never given).
No, with how close they were, he needed Otis to draw their full attention which meant he needed Otis kicking and screaming. If even a small handful got past, with Shane carrying two large, heavy bags on a sprained ankle, he would've been a goner.
By that logic, all Shane needed to do was be further away from them than Otis was when they caught up. He would have been just as well to talk Otis into giving him the bag so that it wouldn't slow his fat ass down as much. With his physique, Shane still would have been able to stay ahead of him.
thenammagazine said:
Not really as long as you think. Shane only made an advance on Lori after Rick's return, at the CDC, for which he already admitted it was a mistake.
That's the only physical move he made, but every time he opens his mouth lately, he's gunning for her.
Don't most of us?
Hell, no.
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pay attention
